In this way, the governor—and later the people of Rabady—learned of how Iord the seer had made a black seithr spell, rendering young Thorkellson her helpless servant, forcing him to steal the horse, then making him invisible, enabling him to board the southern ship that had been in the harbour—board it with the grey horse—and sail away unseen. It was done by the volur to spite Halldr Thinshank, of course, which was not an unreasonable desire, by any means. But it was a treachery that had unleashed—obviously-malevolent auras upon the isle (Halidr's, one had to assume), causing the calamities of the season, including the lightning storm that killed two innocent youths.

Erling warriors were not, by collective disposition, inclined to nuanced debate when resolving matters of this sort. Sturla One-hand might have been more thoughtful than most, but he'd lost his hand (and achieved some wealth) raiding overseas. You didn't ponder when attacking a village or sanctuary. You drank a lot beforehand, prayed to Ingavin and Thünir, and then fought and killed—and took home what you found in the fury and ruin you shaped.

An axe and sword were perfectly good responses to treachery, in his view. And they would serve the useful additional purpose of displaying Sturla's resolution, early in what he hoped would be a prosperous tenure as governor of the isle.

Iord the seer and her five most senior companions were taken from the compound early the next morning, stripped naked (bony and slack-breasted, all of them, hags fit for no man), bound to hastily erected posts in the field near the cairn stone where the two youngsters had died.

When they came for her, the seer tried—babbling in terror—to say that she'd deceived young Thorkellson. That she'd only pretended to cast a spell for him, had sent him back into town to be found.

Sturla One-hand had not lived so many years by being a fool. He pointed out that the lad had not been found. So either the seer was lying, or the boy had seen through her deception. And though young Thorkellson had been known to be good with blade and hammer (Red Thorkell's son would be, wouldn't he?), he was barely grown. And where was he? And the horse? She had her magic, what answer would she give?

She never did answer.

The six women were stoned to death, the members of the two feuding families invited to throw—standing together—the first volleys of stone and rock, as the most immediately aggrieved. The wives and maidens joined the men, one of the times they were permitted to do that. It took some time to kill six women (stoning always did).

The ale was good that night and the next, and a second ship from Alrasan in the south—where they worshipped the stars—appeared in the harbour two days later, come to trade, a clear blessing of Ingavin.

The yellow-haired girl from the mainland had stood at the edges of the stoning ground; they'd made the younger ones from the compound come watch. She'd had a fearsome serpent coiled about her body, darting a venomous tongue. She was the only one not terrified of it. No one stood near her as they watched the old women die. The governor couldn't remember (he'd drunk a good deal that day and night) just how he'd learned about her having been bitten back in the spring. Perhaps she had told him herself.

The snake was noticed in the field. Not surprisingly. Serpents held the power of the half-world within the skin they sloughed, rebuilding it anew. A snake would devour the world at the end of days. It was much talked about that night. A sign, it was agreed to be, a harbinger of power.

The girl was named by Sturla Ulfarson as the new volur of Rabady Isle a few days later, after the southern ship had done its trading and gone. Normally the men of Rabady didn't make this choice, but these weren't normal times. You didn't stone a seer every year, did you? Maybe this change would prove to be useful, bring the power of women, seithr and night magic, the compound itself, more under control.

Sturla One-hand wasn't sure about that, and he couldn't actually have traced with precision the thoughts or conversations that had led to any of these decisions. Events had moved quickly, he had been… riding them… the way longships rode a wave, or a leader on a battlefield rode the sweep of the fight, or a man rode his woman after dark.

She was young. What of it? All the old ones were dead. They could have sent for a woman across the water to Vinmark, even to Hlegest itself, but who knew what that might have brought them, or when? Better not draw the attention of increasingly ambitious men there, in any case. The girl had saved them from the effects of an angry spirit and seemed to have been already chosen by the snake. Men had been saying that, in the taverns. Sturla could read a rune-message if it was spelled out for him.

He did know her name by then. Anrid. They called her "the Serpent," though, by summer's end. She hadn't come to him in the town again nor, in fact, did it occur to him to ask her to do so. There were enough girls about for a governor, no need to get entangled in that way with seers who kept snakes by their beds in the dark or wrapped them around their bodies to watch stones split flesh and crack bone in the morning light.

Jormsvik was more a fortress than a city.

For one thing, only the mercenaries themselves and their servants or slaves lived within the walls. The rope-makers, sail-makers, armourers, tavern-keepers, carpenters, metalsmiths, fishermen, bakers, fortune-tellers all lived in the unruly town outside the walls. There were no women allowed inside Jormsvik, though prostitutes were scattered through the twisting streets and alleys just outside. There was money for a woman to make here, beside a large garrison.

You had to fight someone to become one of the men of Jormsvik, and fight steadily to stay in. Until you became a leader, when your battles might reasonably be expected to be all for hire and profit—if you stayed out of the tavern brawls.

For three generations the mercenaries of this fortress by the sea had been known and feared—and employed—through the world. They had fought at the triple walls of Sarantium (on both sides, at different times) and in Ferrieres and Moskav. They had been hired (and hired away) by feuding lords vying for eminence here in the Erling lands, as far north as the places where the sky flashed colours in the cold nights and the reindeer herds ran in the tens of thousands. One celebrated company had been in Batiara, joining a Karchite incursion towards fabled Rhodias forty years ago. Only six of them had returned—wealthy. You received your fee in advance, and shared it out beforehand, but then you divided the spoils of war among the survivors.

Survivors could do well.

First, you had to survive getting in. There were young men desperate or reckless enough to try each year, usually after the winter ended. Winter defined the northlands: its imminent arrival; the white, fierce hardness of the season; then the stirring of blood and rivers when it melted away.

Spring was busiest at the gates of Jormsvik. The procedure was known everywhere. Goatherds and slaves knew it. You rode up or walked up to the walls. Shouted a name—sometimes even your real one—to the watch, issued a challenge to let you in. That same day, or the next morning, a man drawn by lot would come out to fight you.

The winner went to bed inside the walls. The loser was usually dead. He didn't have to be, you could yield and be spared, but it wasn't anything to count on. The core of Jormsvik's reputation lay in being feared, and if you let farmboys challenge you and walk away to tell of it by a winter's turf fire in some bog-beset place, you weren't as fearsome as all that, were you?

Besides which, it made sense for those inside to deter challengers any way they could. Sometimes the sword rune could be drawn from the barrel on a morning by a fighter who'd been too enthusiastically engaged in the taverns all night, or with the women, or both, and sometimes it wasn't just a farmboy at the gates.